{"id":27377,"date":"2025-07-17T23:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T20:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reganews.co.il\/en\/?p=27377"},"modified":"2025-07-17T15:31:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T12:31:56","slug":"the-hero-missile-that-wasnt-supposed-to-succeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reganews.co.il\/en\/the-hero-missile-that-wasnt-supposed-to-succeed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hero Missile That Wasn\u2019t Supposed to Succeed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Failure That Shocked the World
\n<\/strong>January 1991, deep in the Gulf War. An Iraqi Scud missile streaked across the Saudi skies toward an American base. Minutes later, a U.S. Patriot missile launched to intercept it \u2013 and missed.<\/p>\n

Twenty-eight U.S. soldiers were killed that night. The technology that had been marketed as the ultimate defense shield for the West failed at its first major test.<\/p>\n

The disappointment didn\u2019t end there. In the war that followed, the Patriot would fail again \u2013 and worse, it would even shoot down friendly aircraft.<\/p>\n

Deadly Mistakes in the Second Gulf War
\n<\/strong>In March 2003, during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Patriot faced its darkest hour.<\/p>\n

A British Tornado GR4 fighter jet was misidentified as a hostile target and shot down, killing both crew members. A day later, an American F-16 barely escaped the same fate, destroying the Patriot battery with a defensive missile. Two weeks later, a U.S. Navy F\/A-18 was downed, and its pilot killed.<\/p>\n

\"F-16C<\/p>\n

\"\"
F-16C fighter jet, illustration | Photo: VanderWolf Images \/ Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Investigations revealed a grim picture: radar misidentifications, software errors, and a system that operated almost entirely on automation. Critics called it a danger not only to enemies but also to the very forces it was meant to protect.<\/p>\n

The Comeback \u2013 A New Generation of Patriots
\n<\/strong>Despite the scandals, Raytheon engineers refused to give up. The PAC-2 model improved missile interception rates, but the real breakthrough came with the PAC-3: a smaller, more precise missile with its own radar, designed to strike targets head-on rather than exploding nearby.<\/p>\n

The system that had been mocked in the Gulf War was about to rewrite its legacy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Israel Gives the Patriot Its First Combat Victory
\n<\/strong>Although Israel received Patriot batteries in the early 1990s, they were first used in combat decades later. During “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014, Patriots shot down two Hamas drones over Gaza. That same summer, the system achieved a world first: a Syrian Su-24 fighter jet, which had crossed into Israeli airspace over the Golan Heights, was intercepted and destroyed. In 2018, another Syrian jet \u2013 a Su-22 \u2013 met the same fate.
\nWatch footage of a Patriot Missile destroying a Syrian drone, 2018:<\/strong><\/p>\n